Hello, why religion friends. John Hilton here. I've mentioned previously on this

podcast about an experience I had in Jerusalem when I was eating lunch with some

colleagues and I realized for the first time that I really didn't know that much about the historical

realities of Roman crucifixion. Yes I had read the Gospels and I'd read Jesus to Christ, but I wondered to myself, what could modern scholarship teach me

about the act that Jesus Christ himself defined as his greatest act of love?

The answer to that question turned out to be quite a lot.

I found an 800-plus page book written by a faithful Protestant that included

translations of every ancient document that discussed crucifixion.

I also found a two-volume series, totally more than 1,500 pages, called The Death of the Messiah by Catholic scholar Raymond Brown.

In this magisterial work, Brown goes verse by verse through the gospel accounts of the Savior's

death, synthesizing the work of hundreds of

scholars across the centuries. These books, as well as many others, significantly

deepened my understanding of the saving significance of the Savior's death.

The First Commandment isn't just to love God, it's to love God with all thy heart and with

all thy soul and with all thy mind.

In other words, I found that there can be great value in learning from modern scholars.

I'll be honest though, in the past I've been a little nervous to study scholarship because I thought what if what I read isn't true

Scholars make mistakes and that's a valid concern

Two different scholars might look at the exact same data and disagree

about what it means. Scholars can get things wrong and, like all of us, have biases.

That's a legitimate danger with scholarship, but it doesn't mean we should ignore it.

There is so much we can learn from others.

...